Patricia Mooney-Melvin's " Before the Neighborhood Organization
Revolution: Cincinnati Neighborhood Improvement Associations, 1890-1950"
challenges several modern myths about neighborhood organizing: that the
"neighborhood movement" in the U.S. began in the 1940s or the
1960s, and that, for those who acknowledge an earlier incarnation at the
turn of the century, it did not die out in the 1920s through the 1950s
as a victim of industrialization and modern society.

Mooney-Melvin introduces as evidence the experience of several "neighborhood
improvement associations" in Cincinnati in the first half of the century.
These associations focused on physical problems and improvements needed
in the wake of Cincinnati's growth -- the laying out of railroad tracks
through the city with their potential for accidents, the need for coordination
in laying out streets and water/sewer lines, and the securing of streetcar
lines for one's neighborhood, for example. They acted as advocates for
their areas before City Hall -- and when they saw that they shared similar
concerns with other neighborhoods, federated with the associations of those
neighborhoods to amplify their strength. Thus, they dealt with the enlarged
scope of the metropolis not by ignoring the neighborhoods as organizing
units, but organizing them and then federating with other such organizations.

Mooney-Melvin draws on the work of John E. Davis on neighborhoods and
collective action, CONTESTED GROUND: COLLECTIVE ACTION AND THE URBAN NEIGHBORHOOD
(Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991) in theorizing about the significance
of "place" in modern society. She observes

Locality-based action does not necessarily mean that all parties have
all the same interests; different relationships to and uses of property
in any given neighborhood will shape the limits of neighborhood mobilization.
The main point, however, is that it is very difficult to ignore the conditions
in which we live or the fact of place.....

Finally, Mooney-Melvin offers her hypothesis on the persistence of the
myth of the origins of the neighborhood movement in the post-World War
II era.

To obtain a copy of "Before the Neighborhood Organization Revolution,"
send e-mail to listserv@uicvm.uic.edu with the message: GET NEIGHBOR IMPROVE